Too busy having a nervous breakdown to button my shirt today!

"Chupacabra"

[Spoilers]

Previously on The Walking Dead, they made use of one of the all-time dramatic cliches: the love-triangle pregnancy! Lori's preggers, and it could be Crazy Shane's or Goodie Rick's. This time on The Walking Dead: Shane and Rick scrap over leadership of the group; Glenn and Maggie have some adorably awkward post-coital conversation, and Darryl has the most crazy-awesome backwoods survival adventure since Deliverance.

The campers at Hershel's farm plot out their search for Sophia - Darryl intends to head out alone, to check the top of the ridge on horseback. They gently tease him about seeing Chupacabra when he was a kid, and off they go. (Could they PLEASE find Sophia? I'm getting very bored.)

Glenn and Maggie have a hilarious conversation about whether or not they are going to hook up again. It's so snarky, and awkward, that we must invent a new word to describe it: snarkward. But as Hershel becomes suspicious that something has happened between them, we all become suspicious that this is taking on the tenor of a 'farmer's daughter' dirty joke: and those never end well.

Shane and Rick are one of the search teams, looking for Sophia. Adorable high-school reminisces quickly devolve into a genuine argument over the direction of the group. Shane thinks that after three days in the woods, Sophia is a goner, and that continuing to look for her just weakens the group which should be making its way to Fort Bennett. Rick can't fathom leaving before they find Sophia. But as much as everyone protests that they luuuuuuuuuuurve Carl, wouldn't he have come up in this conversation, as in: he was recently shot, and shouldn't be moved for a few days, so as long as we're hanging out we may as well look around for Sophia? However half-heartedly that may be.

Except for Darryl. He is on horseback on the ridge for a sec - the horse rears, and Darryl is thrown off the horse and off the ridge, down a cliff, into a pool of water. And his crossbow pierces him through the side. For fans of Sunny: ya got forkstabbed. He proceeds to tourniquet himself around the chest (is this even possible?), retrieves the crossbow from the pool, and climbs back up the cliff. And falls all the way down, where he mercifully passes out (doesn't he deserve to?) and sees a vision of his missing big brother Merle.

As, back at the farm, Lori gives Rick a pep talk about doing the right thing: Ghosty-Merle gives Darryl a different kind of pep talk ('everybody hates you, so get up, pull out that arrow, and shoot Rick in the face for me.') It does help wake Darryl up just in time to find a walker chewing on his boot - and what follows is a masterpiece of bad-assery. He jumps up, beats that zombie to death with a stick, then pulls out the arrow from his own chest, loads the crossbow, and shoots the second walker in the face with it. And Darryl is my new favorite character! Until approximately ten seconds later, when he eats raw squirrel guts and makes a necklace out of zombie ears. Just, ew. Merle-visions also talk Darryl to the top of the cliff.

Dale and Andrea are sniping at each other, again, some more. How unexpected! But then she sees Darryl emerge from the woods and thinks he's a walker - the sun's in her eyes, he's stumbling and covered in blood, how is she to know it's squirrel guts and self-inflicted crossbow wounds? The guys all yell at her not to shoot and run for Darryl, but dumbass Andrea ignores them. She shoots, she...scores? Luckily, it's just a graze. As Darryl recovers, Shane and Rick argue some more. Great, just as Andrea and Dale chill out, we have a new argung couple, the Bickersons, to take their place. Sophia's mom brings Darryl some dinner, with a forehead smooch! Aww.

Maggie denies to her dad that anything happened with Glenn, but Hershel's on to her. She protests "I'm 22!" then hilariously passes Glenn a note under the dining table like a 12-year old. Glenn wants to meet her in the hayloft for some loving - she realizes just in time that he's entering the Forbidden Barn, and here's how it got it's name: Hershel locked up all the zombies on the farm in the barn! Luckily Glenn's in the hayloft and not on the floor with the walkers. but yikes!!

What they did really well this episode: Darryl. Just...yeah. Darryl got some character development, and a possible luuuurve connection with Sophia's mom, and I like it all, a lot. Plus, as predictable and hackneyed as Lori's pregnancy dilemma seems, the dawning realization that she didn't get busted to Rick...yet! was totally priceless. Glenn and Maggie had awesome early-20's post-coital interactions. But the Rick versus Shane-iness was overdone in Season 1, and while I understand that a struggle for leadership is going to be a big theme, it's still kind of annoying.

See also:

The Walking Dead S2E4 review

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